


The Dust Has Only

by Jenwryn



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Always a girl, Bisexual Character, Community: sabriel_mini, F/F, F/M, Genderswap, Mini Big Bang, Miracles, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-06
Updated: 2011-10-06
Packaged: 2017-10-24 08:52:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/261449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jenwryn/pseuds/Jenwryn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Sam is pregnant despite not having gotten any lately, miracles are getting their wires crossed, and of course the only logical conclusion is that Cas should be fixed by any means possible.</p><p>Written for the <a href="http://sabriel-mini.livejournal.com">Sabriel Mini Bang</a>, with illustrative art by <a href="http://olive-jeans.livejournal.com/">olive_jeans</a> (link in the endnotes).</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Dust Has Only

**Author's Note:**

> Set after Season 6, and written prior to watching any of Season 7. I am completely aware that I've been awfully liberal with canon-compliance (and I don't just mean the boobies thing). What can I say, canon has never been my strongpoint. Come to think of it, neither has plot. Just rolllll with it, guys.

It’s a dream, but it isn’t; the girl is Ruby, but she isn’t. Her eyes are wrong, the gold dust around them too unlike Ruby, too like someone else, someone else that Sam can’t quite place her mental finger on. She places her mental finger on the girl’s collarbone instead. Strokes upwards. Along.

(To understand, you need to know that the universe can be broken, that the world itself can fall into such a state of disrepair that the edges will begin to tear and curl. You need to know that no god might be better than the wrong god, but that a bewildered god can be even worse than a wrong god. You need to know that there are hunters, and there are the hunted, and there are things you cannot see; things you do not want to see; things that can see you, despite that, and which judge. To understand, you need to know that their judgements can be flawed.)

It’s a dream, but it’s something more, and, as Sam Winchester rocks her head back against the papery wall, biting hard on her lip to stop whining, hands tight against the skin of the other woman, life sparks within her.

(To understand, you need to throw your rules out of the window. They do not apply any more.)

*

In Detroit, a man begins to speak in tongues, and purple irises bloom wherever he walks.

In Auckland, a bird begins to prophecy.

In Cairo, a river runs with blood, and then a woman cuts her husband into pieces and floats him down it.

*

Bobby leans against the chassis of some farmer’s truck, in for repairs as though the world isn’t already canned, and shades his eyes against the afternoon sun. Sam looks at him, headache blooming behind her temples, born from the mess her sleep has turned into; says, “You know there’s something really wrong with all this. I don’t just mean Castiel becoming… I don’t just mean Cas. I mean the very concept of it. Souls equating godship. The supplanting of such a being, in one fell swoop. It makes no sense. The concept of it.”

Neither of them look at Deana, not even at the boots of her, protruding from beneath a car a few feet over. Sam doesn’t need to look, to know her sister isn’t moving, isn’t working at all, isn’t doing a thing, except hiding.

It’s all wrong. All of it.

*

Sam sits with books, piles of them around her, crooked and straight like textual architecture at the end of the world. She tucks herself into them in a way that, she knows, isn’t all that different from Dee with her bottles; not all that different Dee with her grease and her engine oil. Sam knows it certainly looks that way, anyway, and doesn’t correct them, doesn’t argue with Bobby’s sympathetic mugs of coffee – fine cracks near the handles, Fair Trade beans because he knows that she gives a shit – doesn’t tell them that she’s really just avoiding her bed, avoiding sleep, avoiding the dreams that bring the headaches (the headaches that bring the dreams?).

It catches her eventually, though. Most nights. Some mornings. Propped against an encyclopaedia of things she wishes she could be sceptical about, or her neck tipped against sofa cushions; an angle that’s going ache almost as badly as her head will. Regardless; that the dreams will catch her, eventually, is inevitable. They have been catching her for weeks now. Since Cas. Since everything. Dreams of things that she hasn’t considered in years. Nightmares: the Yellow-Eyed Demon her father, her father and putting his hands, his mouth, against her. Nightmares, which also aren’t: Sam, Queen of Hell, with Crowley at her feet, his breath subdued. Dreams, too, which also aren’t: the girl, the girl with the golden make-up, or the golden eyes, shifting/swaying with every retelling of the tale, but always so reminiscent of the _him_ that Sam refuses to acknowledge. Dreams, and the feel of movement within her, impossible movement in every sense; movement of life, of living, of creation, of creating.

The impossible child, within her.

Sam isn’t stupid enough to try and deny it. It isn’t that she hasn’t had her moments, in the past. Her classic, glaring hours of error. Her weeks of desperately-needing-correction. But she isn’t Dee. She cannot look the obvious in the face and not recognise it.

(Nobody is saying Deana is stupid. Deana’s simply so practised in the fine art of denial that she’s a Van Gogh on the subject; she’ll be cutting her ear off any day now.)

Bobby lends Sam something that is possibly the wrong side of roadworthy, and doesn’t ask questions.

The lady doctor is small, and Sam feels awkward and appalled, and yet strangely calm, because she already knows what the answer will be.

*

Deana is furious. Her eyes go dark and she is their father, come back to haunt Sam with lectures about the dangers of men – and women – and things that are probably not human enough to fall into either bracket, nor the grey lines between. True, John Winchester might not have been so liberal in his lectures, and that much is Sam-and-Dee alone, but the anger: the anger is so close to his that Sam has to take a step forwards to brace herself against its gust.

Someone, Sam thinks, is going to end up cradling an ice-pack.

“You’re not even angry at me, Deana,” Sam says. Puts her hands in the back pockets of her jeans. Pulls them out again, feeling too tall, too lanky, too useless, as though she’s been reduced to thirteen again beneath the expression on her sister’s face.

Deana has been pissed, nothing but pissed, since Cas, and Sam gets it, she really does, but her patience is fraying. The weight of the results in her pocket – metaphorical weight, psychological weight; the paper is so flimsy and how, how can it carry so much – tugs at the threads even faster.

Sam shoves her fringe from her face. Repeats her sister’s name.

“Condoms,” Deana's saying, over and over. “And the motherfucking Pill, Sam!”

Sam puts a hand a pocket again, pulls out her purse. The leather is old, creased, soft beneath her fingers. She fingernails a condom packet out from behind an ID, and tosses it at her sister’s face. “I have condoms, Dee. I have a damn _Implanon_ , unlike some people I can think of. I’m the veritable posterchild of safe sex, and you know it.”

Anger births a scowl. “Sam,” Deana says, “When's the last time you even got some?”

Sam turns away. Thinks of minivan and a brunette, far too many months ago and either way missing the necessary plumbing for this particular consequence. Thinks of the last _man_ she was with, and how many months ago that was, half-shadowed in the memories of a time without a soul. There had been a lot of men, then, and women, but Sam’s always been as regular as clockwork and how could she be otherwise. She isn’t lying about the precautions she’s taken. She isn’t dumb enough to think she could have a child, in a life like this. In a world like this.

Crooked at the edges, and wrong.

“What,” huffs her sister, “are you expecting me to believe in the next immaculate conception, or something?”

Sam doesn’t speak, just watches as Dee’s face blanches; just puts her hands back in her pockets, and rocks her knuckles against the denim.

Crooked at the edges and wrong, that’s what this world is now.

*

In Sam's dream, the girl is breathing fast, and the gold make-up has smudged to her cheekbones. Mon Chéri wrappers crinkle beneath her elbows, sheets cool with sweat and enthusiasm.

“Gabriel,” says Sam, only she doesn’t, not even in her dream; kisses the girl’s navel; grazes her teeth to taste the blood beneath.

*

Bobby cooks bolognese and mutters about angels and demons and goddamn genies that can’t be put back in their goddamn bottles.

Sam chops tomatoes for him, rough and swift; brushes them into a saucepan with the flat of her knife. The room smells of basil and garlic, and the awkwardness of Deana at the table behind them, glass of Jack cradled in her hands.

“The problem is that everything is T over A,” says Bobby, as he measures olive oil into a spoon. “If it were one thing alone, it mightn’t be so bad. Hell, if it were one religion alone, it mightn’t be so bad. But the reports I’m hearing…”

Sam runs hot water in the sink, adds soap, and begins to wash knives and boards as Bobby puts parts together to make a whole. The heat of the water is like therapy, like an embrace.  
Bobby’s voice seems to come from further away.

“It’s as though he’s opened the throttle on the miracle machine and now he can’t work out how to turn the damned thing off again,” Bobby is saying. “Everything, everywhere, popping out and bursting lose. Miracles, myths, I don’t even know at this point.”

Sam doesn’t look at Deana. She scrubs a dish instead, and waits for her sister to talk. Waits for her sister to explain to Bobby that, yeah, they know, and Sam is one of them in the process of happening. That Sam is just awesome enough to have gotten herself up the duff without the fun part. It’s going to be stinging, Sam knows, and it’s going to be angry, and it’s going to sound like some kind of backwards gloating.

There’s nothing but Dee’s glass meeting the timber of the table, though. The clink of it softened by the cotton tablecloth.

“We need help,” Bobby is saying. “We need help and I don’t know where we’re supposed to get it. Angels, demons, Crowley, I don’t even care at this point because I don’t think we have much of a choice. Other gods, maybe.”

Bobby’s voice is drifting. Sam slices her finger on a knife, and the water seeps pink.

*

The girl doesn’t look like Ruby at all, anymore, when Sam slips into a dream with her cheek pressed against a book-plate. Her face is older, sharper, and far too amused, far too knowledgeable. If Sam were awake, she might catalogue it better (mightn’t be in this situation at all; might be despite it) but she isn’t awake, so she flows with it instead; leans into the girl’s caress with an ease that wakefulness would destroy. She unwraps a Ferrero Raffaelo and lets the girl suck it from her fingers, tongue easily distracted and the scent of chocolate heady.

“You know you’re asleep in Bobby’s kitchen,” says the girl, laughing, gold make-up thicker than ever, her bottom lip brushing against Sam’s shoulder. Her eyes are amber, distracting, familiar, and they force Sam to warm for an archangel whom she knows is dead. “You shouldn’t make too many noises.”

Sam snorts, sprawls backwards in dreamspace and says, “You shouldn’t be so provocative. I’m sure it’s against the rules for guys like you.”

Amber eyes flicker. Look Sam up and down. “You know, God causes things to happen,” the girl says, as though Sam hasn’t uttered a single word; as though she isn’t sliding chocolate-smeared fingers up along Sam’s sides. “Having a new god should cause new things to happen. But having a new god made of old souls, that’s not right. That’s going to screw with the order of things. Castiel isn’t _supposed_ to be God, Sam. He’s not in control. Things are repeating, out of context and out of order.”

Sam rolls her hips as the girl straddles them.

The girl leans in, sucks Sam's nipple through her shirt. “Miracles. Plagues. Wonders. A baby in Sam Winchester’s belly.”

Sam wakes, her cheek hot and sore and sticking to the book-plate.

Letting the oncoming headache wash over her, she launches a new raid on Bobby’s shelves.

*

Sam doesn’t tell Bobby. At least, she doesn’t tell him in so many words. She shows him, instead, in the way she turns down the coffee jug and asks whether he’d mind heating up some milk. She shows him, too, in the way he wakes one morning to find no space left on his kitchen table, and all the checkers of the cloth hidden beneath pictures of the Virgin Mary – essays on Sarah, the mother of Isaac – printed out notes about Babylon, Assyria, and pagan gods Sam wouldn’t have recognised twelve hours before.

“Right,” says Bobby, and sits himself down like he’s lost his legs again. “Right.”

“Did you ever believe,” says Sam, taking up the middle of an internal conversation she’s been replaying for days now, “in the immaculate conception?”

Bobby pulls a book to him by the corner of its cover. Looks at the Madonna, all wrapped in blue and white, haloed baby in her arms. “Not in the exactest of senses,” he says. “Maybe if I’d spent any time considering on it. It’s just not really been all that high on my list.” He looks at Sam and adds, “Wanna talk about it?”

“I haven’t slept with anyone in weeks,” Sam says. “And not in months with anyone who could actually get me pregnant. I have the results, though. They did blood tests. It's happening.”

The page of results is half-hidden beneath a picture of a newborn springing forth from a tree. Bobby takes it from her, and looks at it, lips pursed.

“Right,” he says again. “Deana know?”

Sam shrugs. “I honestly don’t know what Deana knows, at this point. I have told her. That I’m pregnant. That I haven’t done anything to get that way.” She has to pause, and smile, as Bobby’s face crinkles in the way that says he doesn’t necessarily want to be reminded that his favourite Winchesters are, indeed, sexually active women. Sam smiles back, sympathetically, seeing as she doesn’t much fancy the reminder herself, at the moment. And the word pregnant cloys in her mouth; demands her to take a break and do something else with her lips rather than dwell on the syllables they’ve been forming. If she says it out loud again, it might even become real.

She can't afford for it to be real.

Bobby doesn’t answer her. The curtain flaps at the window; the air brings outdoors sounds, and sunshine, and the echo of Deana beating a car into a pulp.

“I’ve been dreaming about Gabriel,” Sam adds, as though it’s a logical continuation to anyone but herself. As though it could possibly make sense. As though Bobby is going to look at her with anything but incredulous bewilderment.

Bobby looks at her with incredulous bewilderment.

Outside, Dee swears.

Inside, Bobby jolts; swears too; jumps up, and pulls a leather-bound book from behind the breadbox.

*

The spell-prayer-thing-of-danger, which Bobby believes will take the abstract and make it concrete – “let whatever is behind your dreams step into our world, if there really is something behind them, if it really is Gabriel,” he had explained – is the product of seven weeks’ worth of anger, desperation, and dusty-fingered research. The actual attempting of it has been left to the man who’d found it, and so Sam finds herself at a loss. She would turn to Dee, but Dee has been retreating further into the bottom of a bottle, and talk of angels, whether _arch_ or otherwise, is the one thing sure to push her deeper.

Frankly, everything would be simpler, if Deana were able to clean the slate labelled Betrayed By Family, which she is clearly carrying around, next the chip on her shoulder, and on which she has obviously scrawled _Castiel_.

Sam is light-headed, missing keeping down her breakfast, and missing coffee; missing knowing that her body is her own, and not so terrifyingly like a vessel. Again.

The garage smells of chalk and incense.

The clock on the wall ticks. It’s an hour late, and the second hand keeps sticking.

Tick, stick, tick.

Bobby’s voice drones.

Sam thinks about God, the God who was Chuck, and tries to work out what Cas’s claim will have meant for him. She thinks about Becky, with her too-eager palms and her over-active imagination, and wonders whether she’s with him, wherever he might be. Wonders whether either of them are even still in existence any more. Wonders why she hasn’t gotten around to asking the girl in her head, in her dreams. The girl, who she’s supposed to be thinking about, but all she can think about is Castiel, Castiel and the look on his face when he’d tried to talk to them. Castiel, and the look on his face when he’d tried to talk to Gabriel.

Gabriel.

The candles flicker, air pushing up, swirling chalks and tiny shards of metal.

The incantation hums around her, making the skin on Sam’s arms prickle, making her hands move across her stomach without her conscious consent; making her turn, and look, and stare, and hope-not-hope.

When he appears, she doesn’t expect it. It’s as sudden as the spell that had wrapped at her hips. It’s like a knife to her cheek because if he’s here, if he’s really here, impossibly here, looking as real as the last day they’d seen him alive, then—

“Sam,” Bobby says. It’s his careful voice. He isn’t taking his eyes off of the archangel.

Sam realises that the both of them look pale. Shaken.

“Wassup?” Gabriel tries, weakly, and his grin does not reach his eyes.

Sam puts out her hand and touches his shoulder. There’s a smudge of golden make-up on his collar and she laughs the sight of it, too-barking and too-loud and too-delighted for this context. Dee is close to her back, bottle away and gun out, and so Sam bites her tongue, sucks her joy into her mouth and follows Bobby’s instructions like the soldier she was trained to be.

*

The kitchen, again. It feels as though her whole life has condensed to the warmth of Bobby’s kitchen.

She misses the car, misses the road, misses the hunt; surprises herself, really, with just how much she misses the life. Knows, though, that Dee would have an aneurysm if she took the baby out for a joyride with a shotgun. Knows that she probably would, too, if she gave it any thought.

Gabriel looks comfortable at the table, hands unbound and snug against a coffee cup. He looks at Sam pointedly, too, as she takes the hot milk Bobby has made her. Sam hums under his gaze, wants to demand his full attention, wants him to stay focused on her alone, like that, just like that, but his eyes moves on; take in the fierce set to Deana’s shoulders, and the way Bobby checks his wards even though he knows none of them would so much as ruffle Gabriel’s feathers. Figuratively speaking.

“We need to talk,” Bobby is saying. “We need to know if you are who you appear to be. And, if you are, then we need to know how that can be. So far as I’d heard from the girls, Michael had wasted you.”

He doesn’t say, _we need to know what you’ve been doing in Sam’s head, in Sam’s dreams_.

Sam wonders whether Bobby maybe hasn’t told Dee that part. Wonders, then, exactly what he has told Dee. Sam hasn’t told her sister anything, personally, and it’s like waking up with a mouthful of dust to realise that they haven’t exchanged anything but the bare necessities for weeks now. Her baby, according to The Internet, already has fingernails and lungs and kidneys and an Ewok-y covering of peach-fuzz, and Sam and Dee still aren't speaking. Family: they fail at it.

Gabriel’s face twists sourly, almost absurdly so. “My _brother_ ,” and the word is dragged out as though Gabriel is sick to death of all the brothers in all the histories of all the worlds and universes, “had a fit of ridiculousness, and saw fit to send me to Purgatory. Guess it was all that pagan in me.”

 _Purgatory_ rings across the kitchen like a bell; settles somewhere near the sugar bowl.

“Purgatory,” says Deana.

Gabriel sighs. “Not heaven, not hell, you know the place, and who cares what the Catholics have declared?”

“Seems we’ve been hearing that word a lot lately.” Bobby is conversational. Relaxed. He pushes a tin of cookies in the archangel’s direction.

Sam wonders whether Gabriel even _could_ prove who he is, if Bobby insisted on it. She knows, but she knows because she can feel it throbbing in her skin, pulsing like raw power. Like something inside of her is echoing, answering, bouncing back the angelness of him. The child, she thinks, the child knows that he is who he says he is. The child can smell it.

Gabriel is watching her. He has a cookie in one hand, holding it up like some kind of sugary punctuation point. He’s watching her, and he says, “It was a mistake, to send me there, you know – and we didn't all get sucked out, you know, in the great soul vacuum. But then, it was a mistake to let you be the one with the miracle spawn. Because I could reach you, from there. Never could have, from the Hell. Probably could have from Heaven, but who knows what manner of clusterfuckery their civil war been on communications. I don’t know. But from Purgatory… monster speaks to monster, you know.”

Sam doesn’t think he means the baby. Sam doesn’t think that she’s ever been mistaken, when it comes to what, exactly, it is that Gabriel sees when he looks at her. Gabriel knows what she’s been. Knows what she still could be. He knows, and she knows.

She leans across the table and says, “Your point?”

“You were worn by Lucifer, Sam. Lucifer, always the most beautiful, the most beloved amongst angels. I could have put money on the fact that, when things went to shit, you’d be one of the ones to wear it. It only makes sense, for example, that Lucy’s vessel would become the most beloved amongst women. To quote myself, if I may.”

Sometimes Sam forgets that it was Gabriel who was the original messenger. Gabriel, reassuring virgins and scaring shepherds. Gabriel, right there, in what would become the Christmas story.

“But Purgatory,” Deana insists, and Sam sits back; remembers that she’s still in Bobby’s kitchen, that she’s still awake and this isn’t a dream with no audience allowed.

“Sam has enough monster in her that she could have sway there,” Gabriel says bluntly. “If she wanted to. But then, she could have had Hell, too, if she’d wanted to, so her track record isn’t exactly—”

“Are you against Cas?” Sam asks. Ignores the sound Dee makes. Just looks at Gabriel.

“I’m for staying alive. And for not having the world implode with old stories and bygones that should stay bygones?” he answers.

“Why me, really?”

He shrugs. “There’s a plan, Sam. In Purgatory. For you.”

Sam pushes her fingers against the table, all the resentment she’d ever felt for him wiped away by his death, and hers; by Purgatory, and by the Pit; by his touch, in her sleep, when he had worn another form. She can hear Bobby moving uncomfortably, hear Deana shifting into protest. She can feel the universe laughing at her, mocking her. There's always a fucking plan for Sam fucking Winchester, after all. “Tell me,” she says.

“You’re to be the next Eve,” Gabriel explains. “The next Eve, with a Holy Child within you. The Monster of Monsters, you know. Even the godly ones.”

*

“Was it you?” Sam asks, later. Later, when Bobby has bustled off to do some loud and disapproving cleaning up, and Deana has taken a bottle of Beam outside from some quality alone time.

Gabriel looks at Sam, properly, his gaze pained enough for her to believe he might be about to speak the truth. He nods, then shakes his head. “It was me, when you were sleeping, yes. Not me, though, who made a mother out of you; I really am only the messenger.”

“But, the dreams?” Sam doesn’t blush.

“I needed a connection. Dreams are easily enough woven. I figured that you’d link them together, and that you might be able to pull me to this plane. Carrying a Holy Child simply made it easier.” He pauses; eyes widening almost comically, but his face is a smirk, sensuality in his hands as he waves them freely, “Besides, there's nothing like a bit of nookie, am I right?”

*

In Jericho, they find a man who can see the past.

In London, there’s talk of a baby born of a woman turned 90.

In Shanghai, the fish are granting wishes to the men who let them go.

*

When she isn't listening to Deana and Gabriel argue, Sam has gone back to reading the Bible. Not the way she had, as a child; no; in the way that your reading might change, if you were suddenly informed that the Lord of the Rings wasn't the classic you thought it was, but was instead the tale of your great-uncle, who's name had happened to be Gandalf. The old tales jump out at her, as she tries to think what it would have been like. Tries to think what it will be like. Lets her hand rest, sometimes, across her womb and thinks about the kid she's carrying, whether she wants to or not – except, she can't pretend there wasn't a choice, can't pretend that she hadn't had a choice, right at the start, right at the beginning, where she could have ended it all with a fake name and a women's clinic; she'd chosen it, and it sticks like a weight in her chest to acknowledge it. Sometimes it stops her breathing, just the thought of it: the panic of it, rising up in to her throat, into her ears; the terror of so much life, of so much responsibility, of another love she cannot fight, cannot do anything but defend with every inch and ounce of her. She imagines it would be terrifying enough to think of feeding and schooling and not dropping anyone on a soft-boned head; terrifying enough if she were trying to take into account the possible risk of mere drugs she might have done in the past. But Sam has so much more than that, has to think about demon blood, about angels in her skin, about what kind of a world she's leaving, making, enabling.

She spreads the thin pages of the Bible on her knees before her, and lets the words swim in her vision.

*

Sam doesn't dream, since Gabriel has joined them. Or, if she does, she doesn't remember it. There are still headaches, though, when she wakes, and so she continues to avoid bed; continues to fall asleep in strange places and at wrong times.

Bobby lectures her on the risk of it all, to her, to them, to the unborn child inside of her.

Dee looks at her and sighs, makes jokes about bags beneath eyes, as though she isn't just as frightened.

Gabriel puts his hand against her back, lets her relax against him; teases her, and breathes for her, when the others aren't looking, when they're alone, when there's nobody to say whether she's the one kissing him or he's the one kissing her.

*

Of course, they argue.

About the baby. About Sam. About the logistics of making her a viable candidate for Eve. About weapons and plans and logistics. About whether Lucas had been possessed prior to making the Prequels. About whether pizza is better than burgers. About blue and pink and the sky and the ground and fuck.

The arguments last until the earth opens up beneath Detroit, swallowing old ballrooms and empty car factories; until a plague takes out the crops in Iowa.

The arguments last until Sam stands up, painfully aware of the fine, pencil line curve of child beneath her t-shirt, and declares that it’s all their fault. Her fault. That they hadn’t listened, that they hadn’t been there when Cas had needed them. That Crowley had been there for him more than they had been, for Chrissake. That Cas needs saving, saving from himself, which is the hardest kind. Sam should know.

The arguments last until Gabriel stands, shimmers into the woman with the gold dusted eyes, and takes Sam’s hand.

*

“So you’re going to re-hymenate me?” Sam says. “Like what Cas did to Dean? You’re going to kill me, just to bring me back, so I can be all fresh and shiny and suitable to be an Eve?”

They’ve had this conversation so many times. Shouted across rooms and sulked about: the risk of only bringing back Sam, and not the baby; the risk of bringing back neither.

Gabriel is looking fierce, and desperate, and angelic, and terrified, and the fact that he looks like his dream-self – all soft and curvaceous, as though the girl-him likes the sugars and sweetlings coming to rest on hips and breasts – does somehow make it easier. Sam would do it regardless, she thinks, as she spreads her hand on his chest, leans in, and kisses him.

It takes her a moment, as the sting jolts her, to realise there’s a sword through her own chest, and she’s dying.

*

There is blood in her lungs. She’s drowning, and it’s her own blood. It’s in her mouth, coming out of her nose as she tries to breathe; she’s coughing it up and swallowing it down and she can taste it, Christ, she can taste it, the sweet thickness of it, all dark and rich and even though it’s her own, it doesn’t matter. It takes her back to power, takes her back to Ruby, takes her back to the things she cannot be, must not be, should not be. It takes her back to the lust, and she moans, and she dies, and there’s nothing but rust and iron, and the look in Gabriel’s eyes as he withdraws the blade and lets her go.

*

The rise up is nothing like the last time.

She supposes that this is because she’s not coming from the Pit; hasn't been visiting Michael and Lucifer, anyway. She supposes a lot of things, but she thinks, with her stomach, that it’s because of the hand pulling her, the hand – what was it that Deana had always said? – the hand gripping her tight and pulling her from perdition. Sam has never thought of it that way, not the last time she’d been plucked forth like a splinter from a wound, though that could simply be because soulless!her had been far more interested in banging things than pondering them.

Perhaps it was simply because it was Cas.

This, though: this is Gabriel.

This is Gabriel's hand, hot and steady against her hip, hauling her upwards with so much heat and certainty and affection. _Affection_ , and she can feel it, feel it in the way he burns into her, not just into her flesh, but into her soul, and she realises, for the first time, that beneath his print is another one she'd never truly seen; a pale, insipid thing, so unlike the print on Dee's shoulder. Sam wonders whether it is an accident that Gabriel has covered the faded original wit this brilliant, flaming version of his own. She likes it, appreciates it, feels more glad about it than she could express right now, as she gasps for breath – first breath this new her has ever breathed – and as she reaches first for her stomach, to feel the slight swell there, to feel the heaviness of her waist – and then, then reaches for his hand, now human again, but still pressed to her skin.

Sam's not naked, though she'd half thought he would take that liberty. She's dressed incongruously in a paisley-coloured singlet top, and low riding grey jeans. Gabriel's hand is just below the waist band. His fingers smart against the too-fresh print, but Sam doesn’t shrug him off; doesn’t do anything at all, except breathe, and stare at him; at the wild rush of gold in his usually amber eyes.

Sam thinks she would like to kiss him, would like to haul him by his hair towards her, would like to feel the heat of his hand in other places. She wonders, for the very first time, whether, perhaps, the whole _gripped from perdition_ business is actually a symptom, rather than a cause.

“Hey,” she says, stuck for words, and feels as though she's making a poor attempt at impersonating her sister.

Gabriel's grin, though, isn't the kind she's ever seen him giving Deana. It's wicked, cheesy, and marvellous, straight from her dreams. He takes his hand from her hip and slides it upwards, shameless and knowing; doesn't reach her breast, though, like she had expected, but halts atop her bellybutton. “Kid's okay,” he says.

Sam's heart swells but all she says is, “Bobby will want an update.”

Gabriel takes her hand. Only then does she realise he's shaking.

*

It's Crowley who leads them to exactly the right place. He and Gabriel make eyes at each other, like circling dogs, or perhaps ex drinking buddies, bucketloads of history pulsating between them. Sam is curious, but she doesn't ask; there will either be time, later, or there won't. Dee doesn't trust him but Bobby, oddly, does.

Sam doesn't tell them that she can feel that he's alright; doesn't tell them that it's the baby who knows it. _Superbaby_ , Gabriel says, as he rubs his thumb against the small of her back, forcing Dee to stare fixedly in the other direction.

The drive is quiet, almost sullen, and nobody asks why Crowley doesn't just wave a magic wand or something; why Gabriel has to mutter something about needing a moment.

*

Standing on the cliff is like standing on the edge of a rooftop. Not in the prosaic sense; not in the sense that the drop is large. No, it’s something deeper than that, something to do with the little voice telling her to jump, while all the rest of her is saying that she shouldn’t; not because she couldn’t, but because, down there, down there, there is a whole other world of innocent beings walking and living and crying and laughing, and it would be simply inconsiderate to splatter herself on the pavement at their feet. It’s ridiculous, to feel that way about Purgatory, especially seeing as Sam knows full well that its inhabitants are no more innocent than she’s ever been – and, besides, they probably don’t have pavements. Sam knows, too, from what both Bobby and Gabriel have told her, that she isn’t actually going to be _going_ to Purgatory. Possibly couldn’t, even if she wanted to. Probably wouldn't find many souls there even if she could, considering what had been done to the place, considering that only the toughest would have held on. No, she’s simply going to be stepping off a cliff, a virgin sacrifice, and, when she rises, she’s going to be possessed, taken over; a being other than herself. She’s going to be trapped, and left trusting the little family that remains to her: trusting they can free her.

Deana is about to say something deep-and-meaningful, the effort making her look miserable and constipated, so Sam saves her the effort by squeezing her tight, a hard kiss upon her temple and a light punch to her ribs. Sam hugs Bobby, too, quick and fierce; gives Gabriel a glance that says more than Sam is willing to say; and steps off the edge.

*

Sam can taste blood, when she comes to, and it’s like dying again, except that it’s also like being born. The liquid is warm against her mouth, against her lips; she can feel it smeared against her face. One of her arms is bent up awkwardly, an elbow beginning to hurt as she wakes enough to recognise it. She searches for Dee, foggy eyes hunting for the one thing guaranteed to keep her safe, but she can’t see her sister; can hear her sister, but can only see Gabriel, who is holding her tight in his hands, his gaze fixed upon her as though he can keep her steady that way, and his mouth moving as though he’s trying to say something important. All Sam can taste is blood, and all she can hear is the thrum of it in the veins of her own body; it has a strange echo, and Sam moves her tongue, trying to follow the sound. It's like following a thread, a thread that turns startling as she realises that the sound is the strum of the blood in Gabriel's own veins. Sam can sense it, more than hear it, but it's hot and warm and delicious to her, as she moves within his grasp, swift and feral, and puts her teeth to his bottom lip, biting down hard. Gabriel pulls her against him, instead of pushing her away, and he's stronger than he should be, as though his strength has come back along with hers – he dislodges her from his mouth and places his lips to the crown of her head instead, as though she were the small one in this relationship. She finally makes sense of his words and she realises that he is saying her name, over and over again, _Samantha, Samantha, Samantha_ , and it's the first time in years that she's heard it without hearing her father's voice.

“Samantha,” he is saying, and he's wiping the blood from her face with the hem of his shirt. “It had to get a bit rough there. You were being a pain in the ass.” He pauses, and grins. “Sorry.” He studies her intently.

Sam finds her focus. Feels like Sam again. “It's me, Gabriel,” she insists. “It's me.”

“Do I _look_ as though I might be confused about that, Winchester?” he demands. “I’m not stupid. But your sister will eat me, and so not in a good way, if you turn out to be even more of a bogey-monster than you were already.”

“Bitch,” she snaps, but there’s no heat in it, just the relief of being herself.

The longer Gabriel looks at her, though, the more self-conscious she feels, and the more self-conscious she feels, the more the can recognise that no, she isn’t solely Sam Winchester at all. it isn’t like when she was doing the demon blood, and it isn’t like when she was missing her soul, and it isn’t like when Lucifer was using her as his favourite suit, either. There are elements of all those times, yes, and yet it’s nothing like them. Sam can feel Gabriel standing in front of her, not in a physical sense, but as though she can slip beneath his very skin. He’s never felt particularly angelic to her in the past, but there is barely anything angel at all, now, to this new version of Sam, not compared to the intoxicating pull of _creature, pagan, creature, mine_.

Gabriel’s nostrils flare, and Sam knows that he’s felt it.

“You might wanna keep that a bit more to yourself?” he says, trying for bland, but coming out shaky. He pauses, as though looking for a word, and Sam finds herself grinning at his obvious distraction. “Sam,” he tries again, “Stop... vibrating.”

It’s the noise that makes her stop, in the end; the strange, happy, soft noise, that sounds a lot like purring and which, she realises, with a start, is being made by her.

She shakes, and Gabriel shakes too, as though he’s trying to clear his brain. Sam very decidedly does not glance down his body; it’s enough to know that she herself is aching as though she's just been cock-blocked by the universe. “Oh,” she says, then, “ _oh_.”

Gabriel nods. “Uh. I suppose I didn’t think you’d be so particularly... well, it worked better than imagined.” He’s trying for a smirk, presumably because old habits die hard, but ends up somewhere around a very disoriented smile.

Right now, Sam can’t well deal with any kind of expression on his face – _pagan, powerful, creature, mine_ – and so she turns her gaze to a few feet away, where Deana is watching them warily, shotgun folded across her breasts, Bobby's hand holding her back.

Sam smiles, tries for warm and probably ends up with feral, then looks back to Gabriel. Her flex with the urge to reach for him.

“Want to go fix a god?”

Gabriel laughs, delighted. “Sure thing, Mother.”

Sam pauses, wrinkling up her face. “That is so wrong.”

And then she puts her fingers to the line of his jaw, knowing the fabric of her creatures and the fabric of him, and wills them away.

*

Sam had always thought that archangels were powerful, and she can see now that, yeah, they really are. But the power in her own skin is burning so hot that she can feel the warmth of the both of them pushing impossibly together, like stars or suns or late winter bonfires. It’s good that the transition is no more than momentary, because she’s breathless, when they arrive on the mountain top, and she has to focus on the landscape around her to steady herself. Castiel, clearly, is a traditionalist, and so she isn't particularly surprised to find herself standing on Mount Horeb. It's dark, and cold, and the air smells of small creeping things.

She ignores the Mosque and the Chapel, and turns her attention to the arrival of Castiel.

“Sam,” he says, in that voice of his that gives her rumbles, and she doesn’t even fancy him. It’s a good voice for a god, actually; the thought wanders in and past without her paying it much attention.

“Castiel,” she replies, and her own voice sounds just a little bit like the ocean. She’s suddenly glad that Deana isn’t here.

She shakes her head, finds the steadiness of Gabriel’s hand against her hip; directly above the hand-print he had left there; directly beneath the curve of her belly. His touch shoots pleasure through her, and it should be distracting, but more as though the jolt of it awakens her. She can feel the life within her glowing, her miracle baby reacting to the angel in him the way that the rest of her reacts to the pagan. “Castiel,” she says, “you’ve gone too far.”

This Castiel isn't the Castiel she knows, and the rage on his face is dark and ugly. “It is my brother who has gone too far,” he growls. “Mercy should never have been granted you, Gabriel.”

Sam has wound protection around the archangel before Cas has even pressed his wrath against him; the child, herself, Eve, all wound together to shield the one at their side and so swift, swift, swift.

The god before her looks startled, and for a moment she can see the old Cas there.

“That isn't possible,” he says.

Gabriel laughs. Actually, completely, laughs. The caress of it is warm against Sam's nape. “You idiot,” he says, and he sounds... indulgent. Fond. “Cas, look at yourself. This isn't what you were supposed to be. You were supposed to find Dad, not try to become Dad. And you know it's fucked up, this vampirisim of souls. Cas, it's just wrong. What would Dad say, if he could see you now?”

The sky flashes, burns, lightening and thunder and snow all confused and tangling in her hair, on her skin. Sam doesn't believe it could be that easy, but she can see the crash on Cas's face despite her thoughts on the matter; can see the stoop of his shoulders. She can feel the heat in him, too, the rage; the monster, the god, the angel, ricochetting off of one another, and the world could tear, could burst, could break irreversibly any moment now.

“Dad's gone,” Cas says. “Dad deserted us.”

“I know,” says Gabriel. “I know.”

Sam knows too, and so she tugs gently at the god-angel, pulling souls from his soul as though she were unravelling a blanket, a sweater, the hem of something woolly; the strands slip apart in her hands though she hasn't so much as moved. She can feel them, and can feel Castiel's resistance, but she brushes it aside, lets it go past her, ignoring the shake of the land and the sky and the sea on the distant horizon. Cas is not god, Cas is a monstrosity, and monstrosities are hers, now that she is SamEve, now that she is the DaughterMother of all these creeping things that roll in the world to the tune of Cas's grief. Cas wilts beneath the touch of her power, soft and broken, and then she does move, does put her hands upon him, takes his palms and presses them to her belly so that he can feel the miracle within her, can feel the way that it reacts to the angel in him, not the monster.

“I'm sorry,” she says.

There is a chance that she might be crying.

Hiss of wind and hail, and Cas is gone, and the night falls still.

In the vacuum of godangelgodmonster, Sam stumbles.

Gabriel's hand tightens on her hip and, when she looks at him, he is a woman again, the brunette who no longer looks anything like Ruby, but who looks completely like Gabriel, or the Gabriel that would be if he had breasts and curves. Which Gabriel does. They're soft, beneath Sam's hands. Sam likes it. Eve likes it, too; breathes _creature pagan mine_. SamEve places a kiss to Gabriel's throat, and Gabriel makes a noise of greedy protest.

“Why was that so easy?” Sam whispers against Gabriel's skin; nips, sucks, makes a mark.

“Why are things ever easy?” Gabriel replies, and Sam thinks of the grief on Castiel's face and knows the answer.

Sam kisses Gabriel – man, woman, pagan, trickster, fallen angel, blazing angel – until the ground warms beneath them, and the sun rises above them, and a priest appears to stare at them, horrified, blissful in his ignorance of their knowledge of his god.

*  
*

In Sioux Falls, a baby is born, but it’s only a few shades more than an ordinary miracle, and that’s quite sufficient.

**Author's Note:**

> Now you really ought to [check out olive_jeans' art](http://olive-jeans.livejournal.com/41733.html); go go go.


End file.
